Oh! boy.

If you think the ergonomics of the iPhone as a camera are awful – and they are – you should try the 1950s Exakta Varex.

Ergonomic nightmare.

Made in East Germany, which probably says it all, this camera was uniquely bad when it came to hand-held use. The film wind was left handed, though a massive arc with a pencil thin lever which needed two or more hands to operate. Multi-stroking was a no-no. So, naturally, the shutter release was also left handed, and with auto diaphragm lenses the protrusion on front of the lens covered the shutter button on the body. First pressure stopped the lens down, further pressure tripping the shutter. The release button stuck out a mile, making use a challenge. On early lenses the diaphragm had to be manually re-tensioned with a concentric lever on the lens. There was no focusing aid in the dim pentaprism so you sort of sawed the lens back and forth until the image was at its least unsharp. True masochists opted for the waist level finder, which made things even worse.

There are two shutter speed dials, but the main one atop the body can only be set in one direction, counterclockwise, so you may have to hose it around through almost a full circle to get to the next slower speed. Set it to ‘B’ and the secondary dial comes into play, with extended speeds down to 12 seconds. There is no rhyme or reason in the speed settings or progression and you have to separately wind that second dial. Well, you are beginning to get the idea by now. This thing is a disaster.

1/5th second? No prob. Choice of two.

The bayonet lens throat was very small, making design of fast and wide lenses a challenge. For reasons known only to themselves, the excellent Swiss Alpa and the no less excellent Japanese Topcon SLRs used the Exakta mount, though both had the sense to opt for a right-handed shutter button. Alpa stuck with external aperture actuation whereas Topcon at least had the sense to internalize the mechanism. Unsurprisingly, both marques failed. A real shame in the case of the Topcon which was extremely reliable and robust, much favored by the US Navy.

However, should you opt for cassette to cassette transport of film in your Varex, there’s a film cutter in the base. Pull it out and your film is sliced in half. So you have that going for you.

The chances that all this wonderful Commie engineering will actually see anything work in this body after all these years – they have a nasty habit of rusting as stainless metals were anathema to Stalin’s forces – are pretty near zero, which is in keeping with the general spirit of this disaster. I recall selling these new (they struggled on with later models through the late 1960s), during my Years in retail and they felt fragile even when brand new. The last version – the VX1000 – added an automatic return mirror, just one more thing to go wrong. Nice to display these for their funky looks, but if you want lousy ergos in a working camera, stick with your iPhone.

Wild complexity allied with reliability.

Mechanical carburetors provided the right air/fuel mixture to internal combustion motors for most of the 20th century. With few exceptions, they are now obsolete, replaced by computer controlled fuel injection devices.

While not as complex as, say, a mechanical watch, these devices are nonetheless exercises in complexity that a Rube Goldberg could revel in.

My 1975 BMW motorcycle uses two Bing carburetors and every decade or so I have to dismantle these to replace worn or rotted rubber seals to ensure that the air/fuel ratio delivered to the combustion chambers of the horizontally opposed, air cooled twin motor is more or less correct. I say “more or less“ because the nature of the mechanical complexity of the device means that precision has to yield to accuracy. Approximately right beats completely wrong in this instance. The penalty for this approximation compared with modern fuel injection systems is maybe a couple of miles per gallon lost in fuel efficiency. The reward is the parts will remain available for the next century, whereas the fuel injection system’s computers will all be unavailable by then. You can read about Bing’s long history here.

Here’s an exploded diagram of a typical Bing mechanical carburetor:

Bing carb for a Rotax motor.

The late 1950s Leica M2, which I would argue was the best 35mm film rangefinder camera ever made, was even more complex, yet every bit as capable. Just like that Bing carb, disassembly, cleaning, lubrication, replacement of rubber parts and adjustment were simply rituals one put up with in exchange for using the best. You happily succumbed to these requirements in exchange for the sensual joy of using the finest analog machines invented by man:

Leica M2 parts diagram.

My M2 was sold many years ago when better digital cameras came along. The Bings, however, soldier on after over three decades in my care. And that’s because the BMW Airhead has yet to be improved upon.

Small and complex.

German being an ugly tongue, I quote one of my favorite jokes about the Master Race in French:

That’s not quite right as the original translated to “Why make things simple when complex works just as well?” but it’s close enough. And French makes it beautiful.

Never was a camera more deserving of this appellation than the 1930’s Nagel Pupille. Ostensibly a roll film camera taking 16 3x4cm images on 127 size film, it was distinguished by a fine choice of optics from Leitz, Zeiss and Cooke. ‘Pupille’ is French for the eye’s pupil, and the Germans had the good sense not to use the functional but ugly German “Schüler”.

Twin Lens Reflex, if you please.

The stock camera was an eye level finder design, but you could go Full Monty and go nuts at the same time with the twin lens reflex adapter shown above.

Putting aside that piece of lunacy, it was a great camera with fine lenses, ideally suited to the 127 film format, a far more compact version of the larger 120 size, offering 33% of the film area and delivering excellent quality. For those concerned about accurate focusing, Leitz offered a clip-on rangefinder which added little to the ergonomics of the twin lens reflex converter.

With Leitz rangefinder and Leitz Elmar fitted.

The rangefinder is uncoupled. After determining the subject’s distance, the reading on the circular dial had to be manually transferred to the lens. Naturally.

August Nagel, the Pupille’s designer, went on to design Kodak’s line of 35mm Retina folding cameras.

Severe and beautiful.

The German Bauhaus movement (1919-33), headed by architect Walter Gropius, gave the world unrelieved ugliness when it came to buildings. If ever there was a model for the bleakness of the Nazi concentration camps, the humorless, colorless and severe Bauhaus style was it.

But when it comes to cameras many good things came about, perhaps the most famous being the Leica M2. Eschewing the embossed finder frames of the M3, the M2 was a study in severity and cleanliness of line and arguably the acme of rangefinder camera design with its uncluttered ‘one frame at a time’ finder which displayed 35, 50 and 90mm frames when the related lens was bayonetted to the beautiful body.

But there’s another design which takes the Bauhaus aesthetic far further and it’s that of the East German Werra.

The Werra I of the mid-1950s.

What is especially noteworthy is that the camera was designed within the Soviet block, not one known for its originality, commies generally preferring to steal designs appropriated from Zeiss Ikon and, when it comes to motorcycles, BMW. Indeed the Russkie copy of the BMW airhead bike, which goes under the name of Ural, remains in production to this day and yes, it’s genuinely awful.

But the Werra was special, with its clean lines and integrated design. While later designs added rangefinders and exposure meters, spoiling the lines, the original Werra I was gorgeous to behold. The only function on the top plate is the shutter release. Film was advanced by rotating the collar at the rear of the lens. Indeed, I recall selling these as a kid and thinking that the grinding noise accompanying this act did not predict longevity. I was right. Apertures, focus and shutter speeds were adjusted with concentric rings on the lens and the baseplate housed the exposure counter and rewind knob. And that was it. The provided hood reversed to protect the lens, along with a screw-on cap. The leatherette trim was standard black or, far better, olive green.

A beautiful design, one which was last made in the late 1960s. Examples can be had for a song, which is about what they are worth, for many were made and you probably need two or three just to get one working example.